Zoo Story

by Thomas French

  “The Use of Low-Frequency Vocalizations in African Elephant (Loxodonta africana) Reproductive Strategies,” by K. M. Leong, A. Ortolani, L. H. Graham, and A. Savage, Hormones and Behavior 43: 4 (2003); 433–443.

  “Unusually Extensive Networks of Vocal Recognition in African Elephants,” Karen McComb, Cynthia Moss, Soila Sayialel, and Lucy Baker, Animal Behaviour 59: 6 (2000); 1103–1109.

  West African Chimpanzees: Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan, edited by Rebecca Kormos, Christophe Boesch, Mohamed I. Bakarr, and Thomas M. Butynski, published in 2003 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

  About the Author

  THOMAS FRENCH has been a journalist for three decades. For most of that time, he worked as a reporter at the St. Petersburg Times, where he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. He now teaches journalism at Indiana University.

  Praise for

  Zoo Story

  “Tom French has given us a gorgeously written, meticulously reported, and incredibly moving look into the hearts and minds of animals and their keepers. You will never again visit a zoo without thinking of this remarkable story.”

  —JEFFREY ZASLOW,

  coauthor, The Last Lecture

  “Zoo Story takes us on an extraordinary, enlightening journey behind the scenes of the places many of us have only glimpsed through cages and smudged glass. Thomas French peers into the dark eyes of some of the world’s most powerful creatures, and shows us our own reflection.”

  —JIM SHEELER,

  winner of the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing and

  author of National Book Award Finalist Final Salute

  “I’ll read a better book on zoos when elephants fly. Oh wait, they kinda do in the amazing journey that is Zoo Story by Thomas French.”

  —ROY PETER CLARK,

  author of Writing Tools and The Glamour of Grammar

  “Zoo Story is a deeply moving, page-turning, mind-altering book. Thomas French tells the story of the great animals—man, woman, tiger, chimp—like no one before him.”

  —MICHAEL CAPUZZO,

  author of Close to Shore and The Murder Room

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2010 Thomas French

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Hyperion e-books.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  ISBN: 978-1-4013-2346-2

  EPub Edition © 2010 ISBN: 9781401396039

  FIRST EDITION

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  *No relation to the author.